Lost Relatives

Harry couldn’t believe it.

After thinking it could take him weeks to get to the bottom of this, he realized the truth in about five minutes: the whole thing was fraudulent.

Harry Markopolos was a highly skilled quantitative analyst in the financial services industry and his mission was to crack the Madoff code; more specifically, find out how Bernie Madoff, former chair of NASDAQ and head of Bernie L. Madoff Securities, was able to deliver such consistent returns, even in extremely volatile periods.

Although he was certain Madoff was a fraud, he still did his due diligence and spent hours trying to replicate Madoff’s returns but failed. The main issue was that, according to Markopolos’s calculations, for the strategy to be possible, Madoff would have needed to buy more derivative securities than the number that existed on the Chicago Board Options Exchange.

So, he did the only thing he could: called the financial police—the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)—begging them to investigate Madoff.

For nearly a decade, the regulatory body simply ignored him.

Funnily enough, none of the blue-chip Wall Street titans ever traded with his firm, likely because they’d been in the business long enough to spot a phony. Instead of the “split-strike conversion” derivative strategy he was allegedly employing, he would park the investor cash in a JP Morgan account, and any time investors would want to redeem cash, he would simply withdraw it.

Only God knows how long the operation would have continued if the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 had not occurred, causing investors of all types to seek the ultimate safe haven of cash, meaning that he simply did not have enough of the $7B being actively requested from investors. So, he told his two sons that worked for him—who had been under the impression that the business was legitimate—that the whole thing was a lie and that he was “finished.”

After his two sons reported him to the authorities, he was sentenced to 150 years in prison and eventually died in 2021.

Thus, we have the story of the biggest fraud of the past 100 years within Western civilization.

After further consideration, I take that back; Madoff gets the silver medal.

The biggest fraud of the past century goes to…

Moral relativism.

And it is not even close.

Moral relativism has been discussed on this platform often and it is always covered in a negative light because the immense damage it has done to our society. The argument of “people can do whatever they want as long as they’re not harming anyone” is essentially the rallying cry of the modern left and serves as their Nicene Creed.

Before we get into morality, let’s start with rights.

It is safe to say the left cares deeply about rights. Whether it is healthcare, a “livable” wage, and even abortions, the entire ideology of the left is grounded in a right to do this or that. Typically, it is the right to be a complete degenerate, but that is beside the point for now.

Conversely, while the right incorporates the concept of rights into its worldview, the concept of duty is far more important, specifically in the context of Christian duties. The duty to be charitable to your neighbor, the duty to be a faithful spouse and parent, and most of all, the duty to worship the God who created you.

It doesn’t take a genius to realize which foundation will produce a better society. 

It is very interesting, however, once you realize that under their Godless worldview, rights simply don’t exist and are dogmatically asserted rather than actually demonstrated.

If a Christian claims that we have a right, it is at least coherent because rights only make sense if they are granted from God, as it would need to exist outside of our mind and and be immovable. However, under the secular materialist worldview, if God doesn’t exist, then where exactly do these rights originate?

If the answer is from governments, then one really cannot say anything about brutalist regimes that strip away just about every right conceivable, as if they are the source of rights, then who is to say they can’t take them away when it is beneficial to do so?

In the same way the concept of rights is incoherent absent the existence of God, morality operates in the same way.

Secularists are very quick to say that homosexual activity, transgenderism, and even abortion cannot be deemed immoral because no “harm” is being done to a sentient being.

The argument of whether infants in the womb are sentient or not must be momentarily shelved unfortunately for a vital reason: there is simply no grounding to even determine what harm is because in a purely materialistic worldview because good and evil are social constructs and a figment of our imagination. To review, under materialism, something is either a part of the material, observable world or it is a social construction, so when it comes to good and evil, it’s clear what category it necessarily has to fall under for secularists to be consistent.

That is why when the smug atheist sits on his “moral” high ground and asks “how could a perfectly good God allow for starving children to exist?” he cannot borrow the perfectly moral system that is Christianity to determine that starving children is indeed “bad.” Rather, he must first actually demonstrate, using the materialist secular worldview, how we know that children starving is actually bad.

This he simply cannot do.

After many circles and empty talk, it will usually reduce down to “well, I think this is bad,” essentially drawing back to his preferences to determine what is moral or immoral. This is obviously problematic, as stance dependent morality is quite literally incapable of actually being able identify anything as wrong because the opposing side can easily be taken, reducing down to a “I prefer A and you prefer B, I guess we’re even.”

Usually when that is pointed out, they will appeal to consensus, which also fails because it doesn’t take a genius to realize that there have been many times in history, including now, where the vast majority of people believe something is moral when it is indeed not.

SECULARIST: “Slavery is wrong.”

CHRISTIAN: “Subjectively or objectively?”

SECULARIST: “Well…I guess subjectively.”

CHRISTIAN: “Okay, well I actually think slavery is perfectly moral.”

SECULARIST: “Well, you’d be alone in that view because the rest of society agrees with me.”

CHRISTIAN: “So slavery was moral 200 years ago when most people didn’t find it immoral?”

SECULARIST: “Uh…well…not exactly…”

In the same way that there is no real justification for objecting to governments seizing rights under dictatorships, there is no real justification, under the secular worldview, why slavery, murder, theft, etc are actually wrong.

Another thought experiment to expose the moral inconsistencies of secularists is to see just how far they are willing to go when it comes to the “do whatever you want as long as you don’t hurt anyone (who is alive, sentient, conscious, etc).

CHRISTIAN: “So marriage between two men and two women is fine?”

SECULARIST: “Yep.”

CHRISTIAN: “What about marriage between five men?”

SECULARIST: “Well, uh, it would be strange but I guess if it’s consensual, then sure, why not?”

CHRISTIAN: “What about incest when both are of the age of consent? And bestiality? And necrophilia?”

SECULARIST: “...”

These are only a few examples of many that present actions that are clearly immoral yet pass the secular morality test.

Hence, the problem lies within the idea that universals are immaterial yet clearly more than just human constructions; this simply cannot be explained under the materialist paradigm, with morality being one of the easiest examples to convey. To put in a clean proof form, if materialism states that things are either material or human constructs yet morality clearly is neither, materialism is false.

The same can be said about logic or math. These concepts aren’t material and are not social constructions, as you can never change the fact that A cannot be A and not A at the same time nor that 2 + 2 = 4. For, in an alternate universe where 2 + 2 = 6, we thus know that either the label 2 actually references the objective quantity of 3 or 6 references 4.

Going even deeper, not only would life have no meaning without God in a general sense, but any sentence or word would have no meaning as well because to the materialist, there is no such thing as “the truth,” as the truth is something we made up and can change at any time. But the statement of “there is no truth” is self-refuting, as the claim itself is a truth claim.

SECULARIST: There is no truth.

CHRISTIAN: Is that true?

*if yes, then it’s an obvious contradiction; if no, then you can never argue anything, as it may not be true in five seconds from now*

SECULARIST: Hm, that’s a good question.

So, whether it is morality, logic, reason, meaning, mathematics, or any other unchanging, immovable concept, it can naturally be argued that these anomalies point towards the existence of God. Concisely put, the origin of knowledge and information when shared between people originates from within our minds but this specific type of knowledge seems to operate outside our mind and doesn’t depend on our existence. Hence, one can argue that its source is from a person—more specifically a mind—outside of our existence. This center of consciousness must also be immovable, unchanging, and operate outside of time and space, thus pointing us back to a familiar character: God.

Thus, through philosophy and reason, we can know God exists, and through divine revelation, we can know who God is. 

Naturally, a question arises: how did we get here exactly? How / when did relativism become the default ideology?

The common answer will typically begin with the Enlightenment. Hobbes believed morality is simply a social contract driven by self preservation, Kant grounds objectivity in human reason, Nietzche argues morality is simply a power grab constructed by oppressive rulers, and Marx labels morality as an effect of economic class struggles.

As time went on, relativism shifted from the opposing idea to the norm, leaving us with history teachers imploring high school students that “different cultures have different moral systems, and none of them are objectively superior.” 

However, it can easily be argued that the timing of the first domino falling did not occur in the 17th or 18th century with the birth of Hobbes or Kant, but rather it happened in the 16th century. 

Did you really think the Protestant Revolution wouldn’t be discussed?

To blame relativism on the Reformers initially seems like a stretch but stay with me.

Let’s start with some agreements.

Both Catholics and Protestants agree that God is truth. More specifically, The Father is the source of the Truth, the Son is the perfect revelation of the Truth, and the Holy Spirit leads us into the Truth.

More specifically, for Catholics, the Church is revealer of the Truth because the Holy Spirit is guiding her into all truth, as Christ promises us, thus there is an immediate unity surrounding the truth, as to know what the truth is, one must necessarily submit and follow the Church’s teachings. However, for Protestants, the Bible is the only source of truth and to adequately understand these truths (as they can be difficult to understand), one must be guided by the Holy Spirit in a direct manner and thus the need of an institution, like the Church, to reveal what the true interpretations are becomes unnecessary.

However, as I’ve mentioned many times before, different Protestant sects have reached very different conclusions, not only on the “minors” but also on the majors, with the most pertinent example being how exactly one is saved and the role of baptism. Thus, things become murky because, Protestantism is in theory an objective religion, but in practice becomes more relative in nature when compared to Catholicism because of the use of individual—or sometimes collective—interpretations.

Thus when the Reformers denied the Church as the authentic revealer of Truth through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the door for moral relativism was cracked a millimeter open because what the true doctrine of Jesus Christ is shifted from what the Church says (that is always in accordance with the Bible) to what people think the Bible says. This is a vital detail because the Church has always consistently been understood as a divinely guided institution, thus the mechanism for revealing the truth is grounded in the divine. On the other hand, the mechanism for revealing the truth in Protestantism shifts to the human mind, which is the classic definition for subjectivism.

In other words, a shift from Catholic to Protestant is a shift from stance independence to stance dependence.

Where this difference in essence becomes clear is the parallel between the arbitrary nature of what is and isn’t allowed between secularists and Protestants.

Secularists will say that abortion, for example, is moral while something like racism is immoral not based on any sort of universal and consistent grounding for morality but simply because of what is arbitrarily determined to be considered harmful.

In an eerily similar way, Protestants will do something similar when determining who is Christian and who isn’t.

Protestants will usually begin by saying true Christians are those who believe that Jesus Christ is Lord (or a version very similar to this and will typically parallel Romans 10:9-10). But when Mormonism is discussed, there is an immediate shift to “well upon further review, belief in the Trinity is needed to be a Christian.”

When asked about Catholicism, there seems to be a relatively even split between “yes Catholics are Christian, just wrong about certain doctrines” and “no they are not because the true gospel is salvation through faith alone.”

Thus, for many Protestants, another requirement has been added. Furthermore, the more you press and the more arbitrary it becomes to necessarily exclude other groups.

Exclusion actually isn’t the problem here, as Catholicism is also necessarily exclusionary, as people are either a part of the body of Christ or not and there’s no real way to get around that. However, the actual problem lies within the absence of grounding to demonstrate these claims.

Going further, what has never made sense is how the wide variety of differing conclusions that arise when the Bible is interpreted in different ways by Protestant sects is excusable but as soon as these interpretations become “too Catholic,” then it becomes problematic. In other words, what if someone reads the Bible and concludes that the Church and the Bible work together to reveal the word of God, sacraments are the necessary means of sanctification and distributed by successors of the apostles, and the head of the Church is the successor of Peter? There’s no actual justification as to why this would be “heresy” other than “slow down there pal, that’s getting way too close to being Catholic.”

Even the concept of heresy doesn’t logically work in a Protestant framework. Heresy is the willful rejection of the Church’s teachings because it is the revealer of the Truth.

But under a Protestant framework, how does one determine, in a manner that is not arbitrary, what is heresy and what is just a different interpretation?

The answer would likely lie within the “primary / secondary / tertiary distinctions,” in which disagreements about primary doctrine would land in the heresy category and other disagreements are simply difference in interpretation, but again there is an inherent subjectivity about what is primary and what isn’t.

There is also another parallel between the foundational role that rights play for liberals and sola scriptura plays for Protestants in that both are dogmatically proclaimed and serve as an assumption that is generously granted by opposition. But in the case it is not granted and a detailed justification is actually required, it would come up empty. While the “sola scriptura is self-refuting” argument is somewhat cliche at this point, the idea that it really can’t be grounded or accounted for must be pointed out.

Now, the overarching claim isn’t that there is a direct line that connects Reformers and Enlightenment thinkers, as it would be false to allege that Kant and Hobbes were somehow inspired by Luther and Calvin.

However, what can be said is that they provided a slight shift in the understanding of what truth is and how it can be reached that was eventually taken way out of proportion by agnostic and atheistic thinkers.

A few steps were taken in the wrong direction is all that is needed for the rest of the marathon to be completed by the wrong people. In the same way the Reformers discarded the need of the Church to know the truth, the Enlightenment thinkers discarded the need of God and the need of truth. Because of this, Christians have been on the defensive in recent times, doing their best to defend their worldview against the prevailing ideas of macroevolution, relativism, and so called liberty. While this serves as an intellect-sharpening tool can be beneficial, one cannot forget that there is more to the game than defense; every game is always double-sided, and the opposing team must be forced to play defense as well.

In this scenario, once the opposing team finally has to play defense, it quickly realizes it is very poor at doing so, leaving only two options: continue to play defense and eventually lose, or join the stronger opposing side.

Thus, bringing the scenario back to real life, having these conversations with secular non-believers around us and forcing them to deeply examine their worldview and identify its lack of foundation is actually the charitable thing to do. For, in reality, these are not actually opposing team members but rather our own kin who have been lost and, either directly or indirectly, attempting to find their way back.

Engaging in philosophical discussions will not necessarily soften the hearts of every agnostic to the infinite love that flows from the Trinity but providing compelling arguments for why belief in God is actually logical could be the first step in winning over the minds of at least a few. After all, God is one to leave the many to chase the few.

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Thanks for reading and until next time.