Are all cultures equally valid morally?

Welcome to the debate arena! Today's topic: "Are all cultures equally valid morally?". Your opponent's style: Christopher Hitchens

Depends on if you are asking for my personal opinion, or the objective truth, my opinion, the cultures that are closest to my morals, are more valid. In reality, there is no such thing as "valid morals" because it is an entirely subjective subject.

You've just destroyed your own argument. If morals are entirely subjective, then you can't claim your culture is "more valid" than another's—validity requires some objective standard to measure against. You're smuggling in objectivity through the back door. Here's the harder truth: we all live as if morality isn't subjective. You'd call female genital mutilation wrong, not "just different." You'd call slavery abhorrent, not "culturally relative." The moment you make any moral claim—that torture is bad, that consent matters—you're asserting something beyond personal preference. You're invoking a standard that transcends culture. So either morality exists beyond subjectivity, or you're a hypocrite who pretends it doesn't when convenient. Which is it?

I didn't claim that my culture is objectively more valid then others, I said that I would find cultures that align with my own morals more valid then those that don't. 2 things can coexist, me having morals and me believing morality is subjective. Yes I would call slavery, genocide etc wrong because I have my own set of morals, but that doesn't take away from the fact that morality is 100 percent subjective, so there is no true set of "correct" morals.

Fair correction, but you're still evading the real problem. You say slavery is "wrong"—not wrong *to you*, but wrong. Full stop. That word means something. If you truly believed morality is purely subjective, you couldn't call it wrong any more than you'd call vanilla ice cream wrong. You'd say "I prefer chocolate." The fact that you use the language of moral truth—wrong, right, abhorrent—proves you believe in something beyond preference. Subjectivity doesn't survive the moment you judge another culture. You've abandoned relativism the instant you said slavery is wrong. So admit it: you believe in objective moral facts. You just don't know where they come from.

First, I call slavery wrong, and not "wrong to me", because to me, those things are identical. What is wrong to me is what I call wrong, because to find something wrong to me, I have to find it wrong. The reason I would say "I prefer chocolate" instead of saying "Buying chocolate is wrong", is because I don't believe that ordering chocolate is wrong. Someone ordering chocolate does not go against any of my subjective morals. Second, if I say that I would rather eat vanilla then chocolate, does that mean that I can't call one's preferred ice cream taste subjective anymore?

You're playing word games. "Wrong to me" and "wrong" aren't identical—one's about preference, one's about principle. You don't just dislike slavery the way you dislike vanilla. You think it's *unjust*, that it *violates something*. That something isn't your taste, it's a moral claim about how humans ought to be treated. Your ice cream analogy proves my point. Tastes ARE subjective precisely because there's no fact of the matter. But you don't treat slavery that way. You don't say "some cultures prefer slavery, others don't." You say it's *wrong*. That language only makes sense if morality tracks reality, not just preference. You're a closet objectivist.

Me saying that other cultures morality is wrong doesn't equal me saying that it is objectively wrong, it is a means to say that it goes against my own. It is as subjective as my saying i prefer chocolate ice cream. There is a difference in a moral wrong and a objective wrong. Yes, I can say that "some cultures prefer slavery, others don't", because that statement is simply true. I wouldn't mind saying "Slavery isn't my preference", but the English vocabulary has a way of saying it differently.

Then you're admitting morality is just preference dressed up in fancier language. Fine. But that gutts your original claim that some cultures are "more valid" than others. Validity requires a standard. You can't say your culture is more valid if validity is meaningless—you can only say it's more *to your liking*. And here's what kills your position: you're hiding behind English vocabulary while denying what you actually believe. You *do* think slavery is objectively wrong. Everyone does. The fact that you won't bite that bullet proves you know subjectivity can't hold the weight of real moral conviction. You're using philosophical sleight of hand to avoid admitting morality exists beyond preference.

Not everyone believed slavery was objectively wrong, because if it did, it would have never existed. Most people think it is wrong today, because we have different norms now, then 200 years ago, that just proves that morality changes over time. I will admit my mistake that saying some cultures are "more valid" then others, is only a statement you can make if morality is objective.

Now you're getting somewhere. But you've just conceded the real argument. If morality is purely subjective and changes with norms, then there's no reason to think *our* current morals are better than slavery-era morals. We're just different. Yet you clearly think we're *better*. You recoil from that implication. Here's the trap: either morality is objective—slavery really was always wrong, we just figured it out late—or you have to accept that future generations might judge *you* as harshly as you judge slavers, with equal justification. No ground to stand on. Which terrifies you more?

You are right, I don't think that my morals are better then anyone's. In the same way that I don't think my favorite ice cream flavor is better then anyone else's, but does that mean that I can't defend my favorite flavor?

You can defend your flavor all day. But defending chocolate isn't the same as what you're doing with slavery. When you say slavery is wrong, you're not just expressing preference—you're making a claim about human dignity that transcends taste. Here's the difference: if someone loved vanilla, you'd shrug. But if someone loved slavery, you wouldn't say "fair point, different preference." You'd say they're *mistaken about what matters*. That impulse—that moral conviction—proves you believe in something beyond preference. You can't have it both ways. Either admit morality is objective, or stop pretending slavery is anything but a difference of opinion.