Maybe. In any case, non-Christian thinking does not entail moral relativism, or otherwise empirically lead to it, as the person in the post alleged.

Good points. Moral relativism wouldn’t cause someone to hate Jews, but it might make them less constrained in how they act on their beliefs. Cesarani and others have marveled at the seeming lack of any moral constraints on the thinking of high ranking Nazis. It’s not like the Nazis were generally nice people who just really didn’t like Jews, they were absolute barbarians, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_crimes_against_Soviet_POWs , just one example.

But, the deeper question we ought to ask is: when “the folks” complain about moral relativism is there something of value underlying it? Is moral relativism the type of thing we ought to be wary of? In my opinion we should, regardless of whether it contributed to the holocaust or not. I have a hard time imagining a morally relativist society would be a pleasant place to live.

-Ben

A more plausible proximate cause for the Nazis’ obsession with Jews, etc. might refer to Catholicism’s long history of anti-Semitism. You didn’t need moral relativism to round up Jews into a Ghetto. That was the Pope’s idea.

“Moral relativism had nothing to do with the Holocaust, and there isn’t a slippery slope from reason to genocide. Sure, you can have reasons for genocide, but they’re bad reasons.”

That would depend on how you define moral relativism. Historian David Cesarini believes that lack of an ethical core made the holocaust possible. Nazism didn’t really have a transcendent morality, just a belief in competing tribes, and a desire to see their own come out on top. Extreme ethno-centrism combined with moral relativism.