Moral Relativism

I would not say that you have to believe with all your heart in order to have your sins forgiven and be saved. That is probably impossible in this life. What you need to do is try your best to believe and let God transform that partial beleive into true belief. To truly believe we need supernatural help! Hence Mark 9:24 - "I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!"

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If you say there are no absolutes, I ask you, are you absolutely sure about that?

It is not a self-centered attidtude. When we ask for forgiveness from God and recieve the gift of eternal life, we start the transformation from our wicked, self-centered natures into the nature of Christ, who was the very opposite of self-centeredness. Once we have begun this transformation, we can begin to share with others the good news of eternal life and lead them to eternal life as well.If we asked for forgiveness from humans instead of from God, neither us nor the humans we wronged would get to heaven. If we ask for forgiveness from God, we are able to start sharing about how to get to heaven with them, and us AND maybe the humans we shared with will also get to heaven.So asking for forgiveness from God is ultimately better for other people around us - it is helping secure their eternal destiny, thus it is NOT being self centered,, but rather caring about waht happens to others as well.Just READ the New Testament and look at the teachings. EVERYWHERE it says to do good to others, to help the poor, to love one another. Is this being self-centered? By no means!It has been said that giving the penalty of your sins to Jesus is just passing off our reponsiblity to the God "we claim to love," even if it is a freely offered gift. Hear this: it is MORE than a freely offered gift; God WANTS us to do it, he GREATLY DESIRES for us to give our sins to Him! We claim to love God. If I love someone, I want to make them happy, right? It makes God happy when we trust in Him for eternal life!

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If you say there are no absolutes, I ask you, are you absolutely sure about that?

bob_gray says: I think we can all agree that some societies are more "moral" than others, for example Nazi Germany compared to the USA.Now for the next step. Allow me to quote CS Lewis: I know that many of you are going to argue that this "Real Morality" is simply what makes the most people the most happy. But I strongly disagree. Take homosexual marriage, for example. The majority of people in the United States oppose gay marriage - it would make more people happy if gay marriage is stopped than it would make people happy if gay marriage is allowed. Does this make banning gay marriage the moral thing to do? Consider this same situation reversed: suppose the majority of people in the US supported gay marriage. Is it now moral to allow it?Suppose there is a country with 100 million people. Suppose that 90% of the population of this country would love to kill the other 10% because of something like the hair or skin color of the 10% minority. The 90% majority would go into a fit of happiness if they could kill the 10%. This is the way to get the most happiness for the most amount of people. Does this make it the morally right thing to do?

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If you say there are no absolutes, I ask you, are you absolutely sure about that?

Fairly. Are you in any real doubt that the US is more moral than Nazi Germany was?

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If you say there are no absolutes, I ask you, are you absolutely sure about that?

So what you are saying is that a country that practices these acts is less moral than a country who does not, right?

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If you say there are no absolutes, I ask you, are you absolutely sure about that?

Yes, obviously... I never said the USA was perfect.Now answer MY questions.

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If you say there are no absolutes, I ask you, are you absolutely sure about that?

You can determine if one nation is more moral than another. Lets say nation A is exactly like nation B except in nation A they think it is ok to kill random people walking down the street. Which nation is more moral?Let's consider second statement, "you can say that certain actions were immoral." If you say this, you have to be comparing this action to a standard in order to say that it was immoral. This standard is an absolute moral standard.

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If you say there are no absolutes, I ask you, are you absolutely sure about that?

jar says: OK. So you agree that the moralities of some nations are better than the moralities of other nations. The time period is irrelevent. If Germany in 1990 is better than the US in 1831, you are comparing both nations to an ideal standard of moral perfection, and saying that one nation conforms to that standard more closely than the other nation. That standard you are measuring both nations by is the moral absolute. Do you agree with this, and if not why not?

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If you say there are no absolutes, I ask you, are you absolutely sure about that?

bob-grey,Thanks for the reply! You gotta love good ole Lewis I agree it is extremely difficult, perhaps impossible to indentify if correct moral choice in every single situation. But that does not mean that a "real Right" does not exist, simply becuase you cannot find it. And in the vast majority of cases, the moral choice is clear. Is it morally right or wrong to shoot a random person walking down the street, who has not caused anyone any harm? There is a book by an atheist, Camus, called The Stranger. In it the main character, for no discernable reason, shoots a stranger to death. Was this right or wrong? While at first this seems like a good alternative to "whatever makes the most people happy," I believe it is essentially the same. For example, it would make it ok under this morality to kill a rich man and take all his money and give it to a bunch of poor people. Only one man was harmed, but hundreds of poor were helped. However, that is murder, which is wrong. To make this example even better, we could suppose that the poor were not even poor - lets say they were all rich men also! Killing the rich man harmed him but all the other men got some of his money, helping them. Does this justify the rich mans murder? I think not.As for homosexualy marriage, I disagree than banning it would harm homosexuals. But that is a debate for another thread, I suppose. The point is that, while the morality of "doing and supporting that which harms the fewest people and helps the most," may apply in the situation of gay marriage, it clearly does not apply in other situations, such as my example about the rich man and poor people.The idea of a "Real right" that exists is inherent in every one of us, in the way that we think about things. This "Real Right" is a moral absolute - it is not morally relative to a given culture.

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If you say there are no absolutes, I ask you, are you absolutely sure about that?

jar says: Again, the time period is irrelevent. And we are looking at the overall morality of the countries. How can you say something is better than something else without comparing it to the ideal thing? How can you say that one line is more straight than another line without comparing it to a perfectly straight line? How can you say that 1 murder is better than 2 murders without comparing them to the ideal of zero murders? In the same way, how can you say that the morality of country A is better than the morality of country B without comparing them both to a perfect morality?

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If you say there are no absolutes, I ask you, are you absolutely sure about that?

It doesn't matter if a nation changes over time! We are taking a "snapshot" of the moralities of two nations and comparing them. Germany is a more moral nations in 1990 than the Germany of 1940, ok! Why do we say it is more moral now than then? Because now it better conforms to the Ideal Morality. It does not matter if the morality changes later. We just want to comparte the moralities at that point/points in time. The top, because it more closely matches a straight line.If you compare the top and bottom to each other, you cannot tell which one is straighter if you do not already have the idea of what "straight" is. Similarly, you cannot know if one action is more moral than another unless you have an idea of what a moral action is like.

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If you say there are no absolutes, I ask you, are you absolutely sure about that?

Absolute morality is that which you ought to do in a given situation.

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If you say there are no absolutes, I ask you, are you absolutely sure about that?

Right and wrong depend on the situation, obviously, but there are some situations in which the culture does not matter - situations in which every single person, regardless of his/her culture, should do one specific thing. This is a moral absolute.

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If you say there are no absolutes, I ask you, are you absolutely sure about that?

A man should not murder his neighbor and rape the wife and children.A rich person should not steal money from someone poorer than him.These examples apply to all people.

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If you say there are no absolutes, I ask you, are you absolutely sure about that?

Lol, sorry In this scenario, that is not the case.Taking money from the poor person in this scenario will not help them. That is part of the scenario.

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Pray for mercy from... PUSS! In boots. (Don't forget the Spanish accent)