Is moral relativism essentially bankrupt? A good case for it is made here:
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=12
If there is an objective morality, how can this be defined? I have always thought one possible solution would be to examine the moral precepts of various different cultures, in order to determine what is common - but I am open for debate and discussion.
I think I can find an example of Jesus having supported moral relativism in the New Testament. It goes like this.
The disciples were hungry and went into the fields to gather corn, or some grain, on the sabbath. When onlookers criticised them Jesus defended working on the sabbath if you were in need of food saying something along the order of “The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath.”
So it sound to me like Jesis was saying that morality, in form of no such activity on the sabbath, was relative to the situation in which you find yourself.
Not to be too relativistic about it, but it depends on how you define “moral relativism”. For example, I claim that killing a person isn’t always bad - self-defense is a viable justification, for example. Is this moral relativism? Could be.
What I usually imagine as “moral relativism”, though, is something more. It’s more far-reaching, and more extreme. It may claim, for example, that the act of forbidding women from showing their faces and holding jobs and such is bad for us, but just hunky-dory for Arab nations, because who are we to judge? Terrorists attacked our nation? Well, one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom-fighter, right? Who are we to judge? A moral absolutist would be more comfortable in saying that oppressing women so is wrong, and terrorists are evil, period.
So, are morals absolute or relative? If there’s a God, and he handed down an Absolute Moral Code, then the question would be easy to answer. If not, then it becomes trickier. For example, if I walk into a stranger’s house, and kill them in their sleep, just so that I can steal their TV, that seems pretty wrong - pretty immoral. In fact, I can’t conceive of a moral code under which this would be acceptable. So, is that an absolute, then? But if so, then where did this absolute come from? I suppose you could argue that most everyone would see this as an immoral act, and thus the moral code is decided by majority. But this presents obvious problems - what if the majority of people decided that the aforementioned murder was acceptable? Would that make it okay? I find it hard to accept that it would. So in the absence of a God, an absolute moral code seems hard to formulate.
So moral relativism it is, then, right? But there’s another problem. If any one set of morals is just as valid as any other, then what gives us the right to judge anyone? Your moral code may say that kicking you in the shin just for fun is wrong, but mine says it’s all good, so there. How do you argue with that? You’re reduced to morals-by-majority, again.
However, maybe there is an absolute moral code, even if there’s no divine being to hand it down. Maybe the moral code is hard-wired into every man, woman, and child - part of our genetic code. You have 46 genes, every cell has a nucleous, and by the way, murder is bad. Such a moral code could’ve been implemented as a means of perpetuating the species - certainly, a species that doesn’t have a problem with killing each other isn’t going to last long. And so we evolved with the belief that X is wrong, and Y is right, and… well, here we are. But if people are hard-wired with a moral code, then why do people do bad things? Well, why do some people get sick more easily? Why do some people have Down’s Syndrome? Genetic defects. Predisposition to be a prick. Or maybe our moral encoding is something subtle, like our handedness. A righty can learn to be a lefty, defying their genes. And maybe a nice person can learn to be a right bastard.
Or maybe I’m just full of shit. 
Jeff
Some quotes from the paper:
The admission into morality of the fact that people see things differently is hardly the same as saying respecting all others’ opinions is The Good. [erl: to use the phrasing of GE Moore]
That’s not true. If it were true, then there would be a privileged frame, the one that granted them this “validity”.
Who is asking this person to? Really, that’s just Moore’s paradox, something not necessarily startling. No one ever says “I believe it but it isn’t so” and indeed no relativist worth their salt (yes, I am calling on the “true scotsman” argument here, but I think I do so justifiably) would imply that diametrically opposed views must be held simultaneously (a ridiculous claim, to say the least).
Absolutely. Moral facts are not facts in the traditional sense. That is part of the point of relativism, the other being that there is no perspective which claims an absolute position to judge all other moral systems. In order to make a moral judgment, one does so from within a moral system. This is quite unavoidable. Of course, it is also a consequence of epistemological relativism, something a moral absolutist is also not likely to support, so the whole argument is usually quite fruitless.
Is not the statement “there is no perspective which claims an absolute position to judge other moral systems” a statement of either objective truth or moral truth?
Neither. 
Okay … so I should not believe it because it is true, nor should I believe it because to do so would be good … so why exactly should I believe it? 
Well, it’s an interesting philosophical quandary to wade into, but that is not what concerns me.
However, a quite practical aspect is that conservative religionists tend to accuse those who don’t believe as they do of “moral relativism” as though that were equivalent to the absence of any functional morality.
On the other hand, a specific code of behavior leaves plenty of room for wiggle room, loopholes for oneself, and expansions of the code to forbid what triggers one’s gorge in others’ behavior. (For five good examples of this, open any five threads at random in the Pit or GD!) The Pharisees of Jesus’s time – not all of them, the ones at whom He railed – were notably guilty of this failing, and their spiritual heirs in Christianity are quite evident today. Google for “family values” for examples, or allow me to cite the otherwise-quite-sane individual on another board who said to me within the last 24 hours that bombing Iraq with nuclear weapons “until they glow in the dark” was our Christian duty!
To express my own view of the answer, I must first give an analogy. Under Newtonian physics, there were numerous constants associated with every object. Under relativity, however, this changed – those values were valid for matter at rest, but changeable when that matter was accelerated (though only sufficiently so to be detectable when the acceleration was to relativistic velocities). There was, however, one constant: c, the measurement of the speed of light in a vacuum.
Likewise, under the ethics taught by Christ, there was one constant, one absolute – but it was a principle that influences all other moral issues, like c is a single value that influences everything else. That single absolute is the Summary of the Law, the two Great Commandments taken as a single unit: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind; and thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” All actions, to be moral, must conform to that standard – and that which doesn’t, even if hallowed by social custom and usage, is immoral, whole that which does, even if it seems immoral by a cultural standard, is most emphatically ethically sound behavior.
Good post, Polycarp, and the sort of thing I was looking for - I was going to post earlier that almost every culture has a variant of the Golden Rule - “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”; “love others as you love yourself” states a similar principle, but mandates a subjective frame of mind (I would be quite satisfied if people acted as if they loved others as they loved themselves).
However, the theme of connectedness to others, or rather of appreciating the fact that others are “subjects” in their own right worthy of respect, seems to me fundamental to morality - whatever the source of this morality may be. An objective truth, I believe. The exact content of what constitutes paying this respect may vary from situation to situation.
Nope, didn’t say that.
The statement “there is no perspective which claims an absolute position to judge other moral systems” could be said to be derivable (depending on how one viewed morality) from the statement “there is a limit to the amount of knowledge I am able to have that, in practice, affects the decisions I am able to make” which would be a consequence of any incompete epistemology (system of knowledge).
Consider a moral choice. Now ask one’s self: “Do I need to know things to make this choice? (do I use any knowledge to make this choice?)” If the answer is ‘yes’ (as I should hope!) then ask one’s self: “Do I have a method of obtaining knowledge of which I am absolutely certain?” If the answer is ‘no’ then you may have stumbled upon moral relativism.
Ah, but is that answer founded on the principles of Discordianism?
Hey, when false things are true you know you can’t be making a mistake!
This is a never-ending hypothetical discussion of great interest to philosophers. It seems to me that people behave in ways that they think best benefit them in accord with their assessment of the current situation, not according to some set of abstract moral principles. The instinct for survival is so strong in most of us that we do what is necessary to try to achieve it.
Then we rationalize later to make it fit the moral measure of our society.
Writer Ambrose Bierce was a terrible cynic but I think he was close to the mark in his definition of “immoral.”
"immoral - Inexpedient. Whatever in the long run and with regard to the greater number of instances men find to be generally inexpedient comes to be considered wrong, wicked, immoral.