any one claim is as good as any other. To this, I make two responses. First, I am not advocating an end to objectivity, but only describing how it is with us. The truth is that there is no answer in the back of the book to which there is assent, no final arbiter who will finally adjudicate rival claims. Moreover, those who want absolutes tend to accept authority only if it speaks the absolute claim to which they are already disposed before anything has been said. In fact, we are in a situation in