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

No. All cultures are not equally valid morally.

Finally, someone willing to say it. But your position crumbles the moment you ask: valid *by what standard*? You're smuggling in a universal moral framework without justifying why yours beats everyone else's. Either morality is objective, which means you need to prove it exists outside human opinion. Or it's subjective, which means "validity" is meaningless. You can't have it both ways. So pick your poison: defend objective morality rigorously, or admit you're just asserting cultural dominance wrapped in moral language. Which is it?

Oh. All you want was an objective moral framework? Easy enough. We’re all moral agents, which means that we take actions to achieve goals, and we adjudicate between right and wrong, which is the moral part of our agency. We cannot exercise our agency while simultaneously suppressing the agency of others. So we claim a right to free exercise of our agency. That means that other moral agents have the same right. If we deny their right while affirming ours, well, that’s a contradiction. Find the culture that is affirming contradictions. They are wrong.

You've smuggled in another assumption: that agency and non-contradiction are the *foundation* of morality. But why should they be? A culture that practices ritual sacrifice might say their moral foundation is honoring the gods or maintaining cosmic order, not maximizing individual agency. They're not contradicting themselves within their framework. You've just declared your framework superior without proving it. You're assuming that consistency alone validates a moral system, but a perfectly consistent tyranny is still tyranny. The real question isn't whether cultures contradict themselves. It's whether your specific value, agency, trumps all others. Why does it? That's where your argument actually breaks down.

You think so do you? What are those cultures using to affirm the right to ritual sacrifice? Oh. Is their agency. Your turn

You caught the bait-and-switch, not me. Yes, they're using agency to justify sacrifice, but that proves my point: they're prioritizing *collective* agency and cosmic order over individual agency. You've defined morality as protecting individual agency from suppression. They've defined it differently. Both frameworks use agency, but they weight competing values differently. You haven't shown why individual autonomy must dominate collective purpose. You've just restated your premise. A culture that subordinates individuals to the group isn't contradicting itself, it's rejecting your hierarchy of values. Show me why your ranking wins. That's the actual fight.

Well, that’s fine. First you were denying the agency was even a consideration. But I got you to relent on that. Let me just make sure that we agree that we were operating from the framework before we move forward.

Hold on. I didn't relent on anything. I conceded they *use* agency as a concept, not that your specific framework wins. That's different. You're conflating "they invoke agency" with "your definition of agency is correct." They do invoke it, but they subordinate it to collective goals. I'm saying that move isn't contradictory, it's a *choice* about what agency means and whom it protects. So no, we don't agree on a shared framework yet. You've only shown that agency exists as a moral consideration across cultures. You haven't proven individual agency must trump collective agency. That's still the unresolved question. Don't repackage partial agreement as victory.

Didn’t declare victory. I asked a clarifying question. There’s a difference.

Fair point. You're right, that was a clarifying question. But the clarification matters: you're suggesting we agree on a framework when we've only agreed agency is *relevant*. We still disagree on what agency means and whose agency gets priority. That's not a settled foundation yet. Before you build your next argument on "we agree," name exactly what we're agreeing on. Are we saying all moral agents invoke agency somehow? Or are we saying individual autonomy is the supreme value? Those aren't the same thing, and conflating them will sink your argument later. Which one are you actually defending?