Sure, it’s a mistake to treat facts and beliefs as disjoint. But moral relativism is the only honest position—we do not know what’s morally right, nor do we kno

Sure, it’s a mistake to treat facts and beliefs as disjoint. But moral relativism is the only honest position—we do not know what’s morally right, nor do we know whether right things even exist, nor can we necessarily prove these things even though we believe them. So we pragmatically follow evidence and try to treat people decently in an ad-hoc fashion. More to the point, if a teacher teaches kids any specific absolute moral system, many of their parents will be upset with it. So the school system only allows teachers to teach what is essentially agnosticism—the absence of a moral position. The examples from the article can all be dismissed by simple descriptivism: > If it’s not true that it’s wrong to murder a cartoonist with whom one disagrees, then how can we be outraged? A person can be outraged for any reason they want. It happens that this kind of thing outrages a lot of people. > If there are no truths about what is good or valuable or right, how can we prosecute people for crimes against humanity? We can, and do, do so arbitrarily. It happens that a lot of people agree on what “crimes against humanity” entail. > If it’s not true that all humans are created equal, then why vote for any political system that doesn’t benefit you over others? Humans are occasionally altruistic for some reason. Isn’t it more interesting to investigate the reasons for why so many humans believe these things than to endlessly conduct the same debates about truth, provability, and knowledge?