To help you understand the context of the issue of objective morality versus relative morality I will tell a true story. I will use this story throughout the series to help you understand how to talk with a relativist.
Our family was in Yosemite, CA and my middle son, who was a student at Cal State Monterey Bay, had brought along a few of his college buddies. They loved camping and had come to rock climb some of the safer spots in the Yosemite Valley. We spent the week climbing, hiking, biking, and floating down the river as I got to know his friends. They were a fun group of guys.
Late in the week we went on a 15-mile hike and I got a chance to spend time with his roommate Hito. Hito’s parents were from Japan and he grew up near Santa Cruz. He was a very likeable individual who looked like a middle linebacker for the San Diego Chargers. During our time together I asked questions to get to know Hito. As we hiked along somehow we got on the subject of morality and he told me that he believed all morals were relative; that absolute morality did not exist and individuals make up their our own set of values. As we continued along I asked him if he would care to defend those views in a mock courtroom. I would be the prosecuting attorney and he would be the defendant and then later we would switch roles. He agreed and thought this would be fun. So over the next few miles we began the trial and over the span of a few hours I challenged his viewpoint. In the process I was able to totally dismantle his moral relativistic viewpoint.
The truth is you don’t have to be a scholar to expose the fallacies of moral relativism, it actually self destructs. All you need to learn is the tools and arguments I used to expose this moral system. The same arguments I shared with Hito, concerning the moral bankruptcy of the moral relativist viewpoint, I will teach you throughout the series.
My objectives for this series are 1) to demonstrate that moral relativism is not a moral system; 2) to show this philosophy cannot be lived consistently, and finally, 3) give you the tools to dismantle this viewpoint in a conversation. If the person you are talking to is interested in living by a consistent moral viewpoint, they will have to abandon their relativistic system. Do most people abandon their viewpoint after being shown how inconsistent it is? In my experience the answer is no; they have certain lifestyle issues that get in the way of living a morally consistent life. They run back to relativism because it allows them the freedom to live anyway they like, even if they cannot defend it.