RELIGION'S HIDDEN RELATIVISM

Relativism treats moral behaviour as mere opinion and says there is nothing more to it.  Its rivals say that things are right or wrong no matter whose opinion says they are not. 

The differences between the systems of morality in the world are presented as evidence that the world is relativist. They are also presented as evidence that relativism is true. But the world being relativist does not make relativism true. The differences are also believed by many to be overstated. This is true in a rough sense. The differences however are strong on the religious and spiritual plane. They are lot stronger and more pronounced than the differences between different nations on the community plane.
 
Religion has given a lot of impetus to the rise of moral relativism through its distorting of morality. It has taken credibility away from what it terms morality. It has taken credibility from what society calls morality. The knock-on effect has been catastrophic.
 
For example, religion says the worst thing when you sin is not the harm you do but the disrespect it offers to God. That is a really twisted and evil idea.
 
Christianity is notorious for talking about sin which is presented as something abominable. This is relativism for they are saying, "We are doing the right thing making sin worse than it is just because it is our tradition." That is no different from a relativist saying, "FGM is right in the cultures that require it."
 
"Judge the sinner but regard the sinner as a saint and love her" translates as, "morality is rubbish."
 
The saints in Heaven do not mind if their fathers and mothers and children are damned in Hell forever. The Church says that this is only right for it's a waste of compassion to care. It takes a good person to be compassionate towards somebody that can be helped. But it takes a better one to be compassionate towards somebody that cannot be helped or who does not want to be helped. Why? It shows that your compassion is about people and not results.
 
Religion makes some good critiques of relativism but nevertheless it is the best friend relativism ever had.
 
The God concept encourages moral relativism. If God incarnated himself as a poisonous snake and bit a child died after days of agony, we would hate God. But if God makes the snake and does not become the snake, we don't mind. We will condone his part in it. It is like how we love revenge but want others to exact it for us. Clearly, we all have a strong hypocritical streak in us. Belief in God only worsens that streak.
 
Religion is rife with selective moral relativists. Here is an example. Gays who claim to be Catholic say that homosexuality is not just not immoral but morally good and holy. Yet the same might accept the Church ban on abortion. They cannot say they accept it because the Church says so. They thus accept it on other grounds so their acceptance is not genuinely Catholic.
 
Relativism leads to person 1 and 2 and so on to infinity having totally different morals in important subjects. When you hear all the different passionate voices all disagreeing with one another all you will do is confuse yourself. You will not take any of them seriously. Deep belief in what they propose will be impossible for too many people with their truth means there is no truth worth listening to and you do not know what to think. Relativism always burns itself out but sadly comes back in a new form.

Relativism is a theory and based on bad evidence and bad reasoning. A theory is no justification for overturning a morality that has always been the best of a bad lot.

Relativism is just an attempt not to search for real good and real evil but to make things good by declaring them good.  It leads to defeat and puts you off wanting to correct anybody who speaks moral nonsense. It bullies those who contradict the current ethical fads.  Those who believe in a fixed factual morality will often abuse it and distort things.  They are able to do this in spite of the morality.  But by contrast, relativism even if it were good and desirable actually creates room for the insincere and manipulative to pose as relativists.  It is too easily manipulated and is so easily abused that it is an abuse in itself.

GOD

The religionist has to worry more about how relativism makes God and his laws relative than the effects of relativism on people. The religionist will ask that if nothing is ultimately true then why respect God? For those who accept Jesus' teaching that God is to get the totality of our love and all must be done for him, what relativism does to the service of God is the only thing that matters. That is what they object to. Relativism gives us enough trouble when it hurts people. But religion wants us to worry about God as well and sometimes only him. Relativism is a blight but belief in God makes it worse and harder to manage. It also gives it a new reason to exist for my God disagrees with everybody else's God. Worse, it blinds the relativist religionist to the fact that he or she is a relativist. They get too attached to their moral ideas and turn into bigots. It is a fact that though most religions condemn relativism they actually practice it.

FINALLY

Religion might disparage relativism but that is what it has got.  If relativism is the problem then religion is most of the problem.