The hypocrisy of Christians' attack on moral relativism

One of Christian apologists' more common themes is the statement that without God there is no basis for morality. With no "absolute authority," morality can change relative to the norms of the current culture, situation, circumstance, etc. But try confronting them with the morally repugnant commands of their god in the Old Testament and see how they use the relativism explanation without batting an eye.

For example: Why God allowed polygamy:

Why did God allow polygamy in the Old Testament? The Bible does not specifically say why God allowed polygamy. As we speculate about God’s silence, there are a few key factors to consider. First, there have always been more women in the world than men. Current statistics show that approximately 50.5 percent of the world population are women, with men being 49.5 percent. Assuming the same percentages in ancient times, and multiplied by millions of people, there would be tens of thousands more women than men. Second, warfare in ancient times was especially brutal, with an incredibly high rate of fatality. This would have resulted in an even greater percentage of women to men. Third, due to patriarchal societies, it was nearly impossible for an unmarried woman to provide for herself. Women were often uneducated and untrained. Women relied on their fathers, brothers, and husbands for provision and protection. Unmarried women were often subjected to prostitution and slavery. The significant difference between the number of women and men would have left many, many women in an undesirable situation.

So, it seems that God may have allowed polygamy to protect and provide for the women who could not find a husband otherwise. A man would take multiple wives and serve as the provider and protector of all of them. While definitely not ideal, living in a polygamist household was far better than the alternatives: prostitution, slavery, or starvation. In addition to the protection/provision factor, polygamy enabled a much faster expansion of humanity, fulfilling God’s command to “be fruitful and increase in number; multiply on the earth” (Genesis 9:7). Men are capable of impregnating multiple women in the same time period, causing humanity to grow much faster than if each man was only producing one child each year.

So the answer to why god ordered genocide, condoned polygamy, allowed divorce, accepted slavery, etc. is essentially this: Times were different.

(Note: Christians who take the position that the Bible is fallible because it was written by human beings with no supernatural intervention can avoid the problem without hypocrisy, since they admit that god never really spoke to those issues in the first place.)

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